In Germany, anyone is allowed to opt-out of the Google Street View database. Those who do will have their residences censored by a blurred mask. Those living within a larger building will have the entire building scrubbed out. An appreciable percentage of the population has done just this, with the result that the Street View landscape is riddled with pixelated non-places, despite the prominent visibility of their referents in the "real world."
Combined with Google's existing tendency to censor faces, number plates and other identifying features, what is left is a strange new interpretation of public space.
